This week's newsletters will focus on the coffee industry. Today's newsletter addresses the sustainability (or lack of) of drinking coffee. Specifically, the article in the url below opens with the staggering number of cups we drink every day:
"World-wide, coffee drinkers consume some 2 billion cups of coffee every day; Americans alone drink close to 150 billion cups a year."
What is important about this, however, is the strain coffee puts on our supplies of fresh water:
"According to the Water Footprint Network, which measures fresh water used to produce consumer goods, each cup of coffee requires the equivalent of a 16-minute shower to produce, farm to cup."
As a result, the article argues that there is a greater push for coffee companies to advertise the sustainable nature of their particular coffee beans, and a greater demand among consumers for such coffee. The trouble is that there is also a lot of greenwashing in the industry, particularly around the use of the organic label, which is difficult to obtain and not particularly related to sustainable coffee:
"Many green-minded farmers don't have the time or resources to obtain organic certification. And that certification doesn't cover critical issues such as deforestation and habitat protection. Farming practices vary widely across the 50 or so coffee-growing countries, and unpredictable weather forces farmers to pivot to survive."
Instead, the article offers a more detailed definition of sustainable coffee, but without a clear understanding of how that can be certified and conveyed to consumers willing to pay for the assurance:
"If you want to buy conscientiously, it helps to understand sustainability as a cycle. For farmers to invest in best practices and equipment, they need long-term buy-in from companies willing to pay more for a planet-friendly bean. Money needs to go back into their communities to foster health and education. Roasters, too, need to reduce carbon output. And resources need to go to scientific research."
As a start, the article offers four coffee companies that cover one or more components of this process using benchmark practices.
Take care
David
David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020
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Cool Beans
By Aleksandra Crapanzano
September 25-26, 2021
The Wall Street Journal
Late Edition – Final
D7
